Sociology
Are you a caregiver? Do you feel isolated, frustrated, sad, resentful, angry, or guilty? Do you feel as if no one understands what you're going through or that others aren't pulling their weight? Do you believe that you can't express your true thoughts and feelings to others for fear of being judged? I get it!
I was one of the primary caregivers for my mother, who had Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. During the course of our journey, I learned that the only people who could really relate were those who had similar experiences... but I didn't even feel safe sharing my feelings with fellow caregivers. I didn't want people to think less of me because of my thoughts and feelings. I had no outlet...until God stepped in.
I was led to begin keeping a journal, which I had never successfully done before. I hated revisiting thoughts and feelings by writing them down and resisted with everything within me. But God didn't let me rest until I began to do what He was directing me to do. Once I obeyed, what was initially a chore became a lifeline.
My journal became my trusted friend. I could write things in my journal that I wouldn't dream of verbalizing to anyone else, and I did so without guilt. My journal soothed and comforted me and I believe that whenever caregivers have information that would benefit others, they must share. That's why I created "Caregiver to Caregiver, a Scripture-Focused, Guided Reflection Journal." This is a fifty-two-week journal that was designed with you in mind, from one caregiver to another.
I want to not only encourage you to journal,l but also to share with you the beloved scriptures that sustained me and practical tips including; self-care, preparing to become a caregiver, alternative care settings, hospice care, and more, that I'm hoping will be helpful for you. I have also included guided reflections for those who have trouble getting started.
All caregiving journeys are unique, but there are some commonalities. We all need support. We all have a desire to feel appreciated. We all need a safe space to express ourselves. We all have a responsibility to reach out our hands to lift someone else up. I pray that this journal is the hand that you need.
May God bless you. I thank you for all you do.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • “An instant American classic.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
Chapter 1: Introduction: Shaping the Garment, Shaping the Woman
Chapter 2: The Corset in our Collective Consciousness: Exotic, Erotic, or Other?
Chapter 3: The Corset as a Garment: Is it a Representative of Who Wore It?
Chapter 4: The Corset as Civilization: The Debate on Clothing and Women's Social Wellbeing
Chapter 5: The Corset as a Killer: Did Corseting Negatively Impact Longevity?
Chapter 6: Women's Experiences in Life, Death, and Burial: The St. Bride's Parish Records Chapter 7: The Corseted Skeleton: Skeletal Remains of St. Bride's Lower Churchyard
Chapter 8: Conclusion: Modern Corseting and How We Talk About Today's Women
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it--a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled primitive or advanced. What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity.
Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today.
Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.
